God, Hypostasis, and the Threat of Paradox: Exploring Kantian And Non-Kantian Reasons for Circumspection
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Damián Bravo Zamora
Abstract
In this paper, I present an interpretation of Kant’s view that reason’s hypostasis of the idea of a sum-total of reality is dogmatic and illegitimate. In the section on the ‘Transcendental Ideal’, the second section of the Ideal of Pure Reason chapter in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant starts by describing reason’s procedure from the affirmation of the principle of thoroughgoing determination to the hypostasis in question. According to the interpretation I defend, the argument for hypostasis deployed in this section constitutes an improvement upon an argument defended by the pre-critical Kant himself in his 1673 essay “The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God”. By making reference to the concept of omnitudo realitatis, the argument in the ‘Transcendental Ideal’ section presents a much more radical and convincing interpretation of the thesis that ‘possibility presupposes actuality’. Second, I present transcendental idealism and its related distinction between objects of sense and objects in general as the main dissuasive argument of the critical philosopher against hypostasis. Finally, I consider an argument against hypostasis that is independent of transcendental idealism: the threat of set-theoretical paradoxes if we hypostatize the relevant idea, intended as the concept of an absolutely comprehensive totality.
© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- The Internality of Moral Faith in Kant’s Religion
- Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed
- Evil, the Laws of Nature, and Miracles
- Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God
- Kant on Contradiction, Conceptual Content, and the Ens Realissimum
- Kant’s Debt to Baumgarten in His Religious (Un‐)Grounding of Ethics
- The Ideal of the Highest Good and the Objectivity of Moral Judgment
- Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument
- God, Hypostasis, and the Threat of Paradox: Exploring Kantian And Non-Kantian Reasons for Circumspection
- Hidden Antinomies of Practical Reason, and Kant’s Religion of Hope
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
Articles in the same Issue
- Titelseiten
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021
- Titelei
- Table of Contents
- The Internality of Moral Faith in Kant’s Religion
- Kant’s Critical Argument(s) for Immortality Reassessed
- Evil, the Laws of Nature, and Miracles
- Kant’s post-1800 Disavowal of the Highest Good Argument for the Existence of God
- Kant on Contradiction, Conceptual Content, and the Ens Realissimum
- Kant’s Debt to Baumgarten in His Religious (Un‐)Grounding of Ethics
- The Ideal of the Highest Good and the Objectivity of Moral Judgment
- Predication and Modality in Kant’s Critique of the Ontological Argument
- God, Hypostasis, and the Threat of Paradox: Exploring Kantian And Non-Kantian Reasons for Circumspection
- Hidden Antinomies of Practical Reason, and Kant’s Religion of Hope
- List of Contributors
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2019, 2020 and 2021